Chapter 319 I was going to make you answer for her

Chapter 319: Chapter 319 I was going to make you answer for her

Ethan’s POV

My feet stopped.

My whole body locked up, turned to stone. It was a long moment before I could make my neck work enough to turn and look at her, like the words simply refused to make sense.

"What did you say?"

"I said." Her voice didn’t shake. Every word landed separately, ground out through her teeth. "Aria is the heir of the Smith empire."

She tossed her phone at me. On the screen was a news piece about the Smith heir, and there was Aria, caught clear as day by the camera.

The quiet return of the Smith fortune.

Vincent Smith was dead. His heir had never once shown her face in public—only ever a name in a headline, never a body in a room. There’d been plenty of events, plenty of appearances. It was just that no one in the Holt family had ever bothered to look.

Why would we have connected those untouchable powers at the top of the wolf world Kingdom to a plain, unwanted orphan girl who used to carry trays at our pack functions?

I picked up the phone. And when I saw her face—that face I knew better than my own—the room tilted and swung. My vision blurred at the edges. My wolf let out a low, mournful sound, the kind he only made when we’d lost something we were never getting back.

Everything she’d done these past months came crashing over me like a wave.

Aria, moving out of the house without a word to anyone. So that was when. She’d already claimed the crown by then, already knew exactly what she was.

She’d stood there and accused me of playing with her heart. Climbed up onto that moral high ground and told me I’d betrayed everything she’d given me, every ounce of love she’d poured into us.

And all the while, she was the one lying. She’d inherited an empire and never breathed a word of it.

*Aria. You cold-hearted—*

My wolf whimpered inside me, torn between fury and something that felt horribly like grief. Because I was the one who’d rejected the bond.

I was the one who’d chosen Clara. And still, when I let myself think of her, my wolf keened for her like a mate we’d thrown into the fire with our own two hands.

The woman I’d let myself drown in guilt over. The woman I’d have defied the whole Holt line for, broken every promise to Clara for, just to keep—

She was the one without a heart.

If she’d ever loved me, how could she have hidden what she was?

I’d been sick with missing her, sick with regret. And she had burned my family to the ground and turned around and married another wolf. A King.

Now I finally understood how pathetic I was.

She had never loved me. Everything between us had been a tool in her hand.

Use. Deceit. Revenge.

*She* was the one who never felt a thing.

"Aria." Her name came out of me like something torn loose, and my wolf snarled and broke on it at the same time. My grip crushed down on the phone until the casing groaned.

My mother’s eyes shone, but she blinked the tears back.

"Now you see. None of it was your fault. Aria is the Smith heir. This was cat and mouse from the start—she was always going to win. It wouldn’t have mattered what you did or how well you did it. The Silver Creek Pack were finished the moment she chose to end us."

"You need to pull yourself together." My mother’s hand landed on my shoulder. "For the pack. Can you do that for me?"

I said nothing. I turned from her and sank back down onto my knees before my grandmother.

*Stay with her,* my wolf murmured, quiet and hollow. *There’s nothing left to fight. Just stay.*

I didn’t answer him either. I bowed my head to the floor. Once. Twice. Three times.

After that, no matter how my mother called my name, no matter what she said, I didn’t speak. I didn’t move.

Just before dawn, the old woman’s heart stopped.

Aria.

Luna Queen. Smith heir. I don’t care what you are.

I’m going to make you answer for her. Whatever it takes.